Glass Puzzle
Organized by Mary Simpson
Simone Subal
131 Bowery, New York NY
June 28 – August 1, 2014
Uri Aran
Andrea Büttner
Joan Jonas
Yorgos Sapountzis
Mary Simpson
︎ text
︎ press
It is as if we have all been lowered into an atmosphere of glass. –Anne Carson, The Glass Essay*
I called the work ‘Glass Puzzle’ because it was a puzzle in space. I was interested in making a sensual space. It’s also a puzzle about two women, about whom there is no explanation. –Joan Jonas*
One version of an event is like a body without a shadow. If we flip our idea of the split, from Freud (division from trauma) or Janet (retreat from hysteria), instead of a psychic break we arrive at a fracturing whole, shifting into versions and variations as a natural tear along the lines of the self: a puzzle. A game of mimesis, with rules and logic but no goal. At the start of the game a split occurs, one body—one performer—into two. The self scatters, and in that moment a gap is formed, between the mirror (the screen) and the double (the self). A glass puzzle plays with that gap, exploits it. It splits, then works to conceal the split, picks up a mask to substitute one for another, a surrogate. A glass puzzle is a puzzle in space—perpetually pieced back together, never completing itself.
Taking its title from Joan Jonas’s 1973-74 video work, Glass Puzzle, the exhibition brings together artists working with the logic of rules, substitution, artifact and repetition.
--Mary Simpson
*Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God, 1995
*Mason Leaver-Yap, Performing the Image: Joan Jonas’ Glass Puzzle, 2011
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c10bd04b0814f0877d54842869ab43e2634bf46713591a9f6756a8a12feeada4/Glass-Puzzle-installation-1.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9247d5e9d66d22da54424a1862d71af8301fd62c0bc0f87ec7b13ef5a89223f9/Install9-Glass-Puzzle.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c34389467a454e4aa6d218eb261bf0371e625ba0249f24781a165ea701853b3d/Install7-glass-Puzzle.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b8f8d6cde198b71ffaedf5e1785d53dc041ec08e8df0063c76966683fa4fabe7/Install4-Glass-Puzzle.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/088a1389d45e1d72690c127cd9261aff0e24e98c20dec8e91170375bee589b99/AB_Untitled_Corner-s_2x.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bb11d603841cbce82acc034d71d2c60838ed22d9d15cdcd0649ed30a485b5912/Andrea-Buttner-2.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e44b808370e494579563cef5038c394fae6daff8790743b3fae35fa100a4ba08/Uri-Aran-Dog.jpg)
Uri Aran, Untitled, video, 3:24 minutes, 2006